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Formats
Ebook Details
  • 01/2021
  • 978-1-8381965-1-6 B08T1QR7YC
  • 398 pages
  • $8.15
Paperback Book Details
  • 01/2021
  • 9781838196509 1838196501
  • 398 pages
  • $12.20
Ruth Mohrman
Author
Gold of Pleasure: A Novel of Christina of Markyate
Ruth Mohrman, author
Christina of Markyate was a gifted twelfth-century English woman, whose visions brought her local fame and who once owned the renowned St Albans Psalter. As a young girl she refused the sexual advances of the Bishop of Durham and ran away from home rather than consummate a forced marriage. Christina was hidden for years by rural hermits, developed a passionate attachment for one of her rescuers, and finally achieved the religious life she had always wanted, as a Prioress. The Abbot of St Albans came to rely on her spiritual gifts and commissioned a biography of her, but was she the saint he thought her to be? In this carefully researched and insightful novel, Ruth Mohrman goes beyond the medieval account of Christina’s life to imagine a woman who was many things at once. A lover of beautiful things who spent years in poverty, a divine seer bound by the past, a woman pledged to chastity who had intimate relationships with powerful men. Haunted by the secrets she was obliged to keep, in Gold of Pleasure Christina finally finds a measure of peace in the place she least expects.
Reviews
Daniel Kephart on Goodreads

One of the most important works of historical fiction in some time.
Mohrman, a well-established scholar, adapts the medieval saint's Life of Christina of Markyate to the form of a novel. A controversial story for its realism concerning sexuality, the Life was never finished, but survived in partial form, along with a psalter thought to be made for Christina.
The prose is effective and pleasant, and while "Gold of Pleasure" builds slowly in early chapters, it blossoms into a delicate retelling of one of the most compelling stories of the Middle Ages. Here is a story not about kings or archbishops, but a recluse who loved God and shaped the lives of those around her. Mohrman does Christina justice, and that is no small thing to say.

Marion Glasscoe, ed The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England

“I really enjoyed Gold of Pleasure and found it a perhaps unlikely page turner! The writer has capitalised so well on the suspense potential in the original story that it was hard to take any break between the sections. The novel is beautifully written and brings to life details of the material and natural context of her story in ways that also provide insight into a complex and conflicted personality. I found the book so beautifully, in many ways, elusive, with so many discussable ambiguities.” 

Ruth Evans, Professor of English, St Louis University

“Ruth Mohrman writes superbly. She conjures up her world in terms that are both medieval and modern, evoking not only the texture of political intrigue and everyday life in twelfth-century England but also Christina’s mix of self-assuredness and vulnerability as she negotiates the social and familial pressures that threaten her.”

Formats
Ebook Details
  • 01/2021
  • 978-1-8381965-1-6 B08T1QR7YC
  • 398 pages
  • $8.15
Paperback Book Details
  • 01/2021
  • 9781838196509 1838196501
  • 398 pages
  • $12.20
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